Westchase’s traditional kick-off of the fall season began this Saturday, Oct. 29, with the tenth anniversary running of The Great West Chase, followed by a community-wide celebration of Westchase’s 20th anniversary. Because it was year number 10, each participant of the 5K received a commemorative medal. Once I read that, I knew that Davy would want to run this race. He loved wearing my last medal and knowing that it was a “real” medal would be extremely appealing to him. Up until this point, he has run 2 miles with me and his longest hike is somewhere between 3 and 4 miles. So when we asked him if he wanted to do it, without hesitation he said “Yes!!”

A couple of days before the race I drove him through the race path so he would know when, where and what he should expect. The day before I took him to pick up the packets with me. He was so excited. The morning of…it was raining. :O( But that didn’t stop us! A little after 7:30 we met Kelly outside and the four of us walked over in the drizzle to the start of the race. There were over 900 participants. We tied up our chips and took our place in line. The horn blared and the crowd takes off, including Davy. Kelly, Andy, and I were like “Ok pal…slow down!” He ran almost the entire first mile, but we didn’t want him to get to tired so we started doing intervals between the light poles. Run 3 poles, walk 1. When we got to the golf course for the turn around, he grabbed his water and was shocked at how many people littered their cups. Such a sweet boy, he stood in front of the garbage can, drank his water, and then tossed his cup. By the time we reached our neighborhood, he was ready to claim his medal. He ran the last .5 – .7 miles of the race and looking back I wonder how much we slowed him down worrying that he was going to get tired. He missed 3d place by 2 minutes. I won’t forget his face as he entered the tunnel, the crowd was cheering, and he ran straight over to the girl handing out the medals. He was proud. We asked him if he wanted to do another race sometime and he said, “Yes, daddy will you help me hang my medals on my shark board?” This Friday he is taking his medal and race number in for show-and-tell.

The pictures were taken on my phone, so the quality isn’t that great…but it doesn’t matter…I still got them :O).